This year of our imaginary journey affords a strange contrast with the appearance the streets will possess some sixty years later. Ludgate Hill, in 1837 an exceedingly narrow thoroughfare, paved with rough granite setts, will in the last decade of the century present a very different aspect. Instead of the dingy brick warehouses there will be handsome premises of some architectural pretensions, and the Hill will be considerably widened. The setts will have disappeared, to be replaced by wood pavement, and the traffic will have increased tenfold; until, in fact, it has become a continuous stream. There will be strange vehicles, too, unknown in 1837,--omnibuses, hansom-cabs, and motor cars, and where Ludgate Hill joins Fleet Street there will be a Circus and an obstructive railway-bridge. [Illustration: ‘AN OLD GENTLEMAN, A COBBETT-LIKE PERSON.’] We proceed in leisurely fashion down Ludgate Hill, and halt for passengers and parcels at the ‘Bolt-in-Tun,’ Fleet Street, which is now a railway receiving office. Thence by slow degrees, calling at the ‘Red Lion,’ ‘Spotted Dog,’ and the ‘White Hart,’ we eventually reach the ‘Gloucester Coffee House,’ Piccadilly, re-built many years ago, and now the ‘Berkeley Hotel.’ Beyond this point, progress is fortunately speedier, and we reach Hyde Park Corner in, comparatively speaking, the twinkling of an eye. Hyde Park Corner in 1837, this year of the Queen’s accession, has begun to feel the great changes that are presently to alter London so marvellously. We have among our fellow-travellers by the stage an old gentleman, a Cobbett-like person, who wears a rustic, semi-farmer kind of appearance, and recollects many improvements here; who can ‘mind the time, look you,’ when the turnpike-gate (which was removed in 1825) stood at the corner; when St. George’s Hospital was a private mansion, the residence of Lord Lanesborough; and when the road leading past it to Pimlico was quite wild country, as in the picture on page 43, where sportsmen shot snipe in those marshes that were in future years [Illustration: THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON’S STATUE.] to become the site of Belgrave Square and other aristocratic quarters.